this is how we keep on breathing
by Luna Maria Boulevardes
Summary: It wasn't a problem, it was coping; it wasn't trauma, it was just his past. Then Korra tries to touch him and all of Mako's carefully constructed walls fall down, leaving him exposed to all the things he was trying so hard to pretend never happened, all the secrets he would not tell Bolin. Makorra, Bosami. Cutting, child prostitution.
1. Chapter 1

_this is how we keep on breathing._

**By Luna Maria Boulevardes**

* * *

**_chapter one._**

_From Psychology: An Introduction written by Dr. Lee Fire. Dr. Fire is best known for his work with the Fire Nation royal family, notably acting as the leading doctor in the treatment of Princess Azula. Dr. Fire's textbook series Psychology is currently used in classrooms around the world, including Ba Sing Se University and the University of Republic City. _

**I. maladaptive behavior (n)**:  
a behavior that is counterproductive to the individual's ultimate goals.  
a behavior that interferes with the individual's ability to live independently, maintain relationships; may even threaten his or her survival (see recreational drug use, alcoholism, eating disorders).  
a maladaptive behavior is essentially self-destructive.

**II. dysfunctional behavior (n):  
**a behavior that does not accomplish the individual's desired outcome.  
a behavior that interferes with the individual's ability to get what s/he wants.

_**IIa. **distinguishing a **maladaptive **behavior from a **dysfunctional **behavior:_  
a **maladaptive** behavior achieves the individual's _short term goal_, i.e., it responds to an initial trigger and neutralizes it. a **dysfunctional **behavior fails to neutralize the trigger; it fails to fulfill its intended function.

_**IIai. **example:  
_Bolin gorges himself on noodles after he sees Korra and Mako kissing. The kiss is upsetting; it **triggers **a desire for comfort. Bolin's gorging is **functional** because it comforts him. Bolin's gorging is **maladaptive**; it is self-destructive. It hurts Bolin, and it does not get him what he really wants – a return of his affection.

* * *

"I really can't believe you right now."

Mako doesn't respond. He drops his gaze to his feet and Bolin sighs and sits down next to him. He puts big his hand over Mako's smaller one and squeezes gently. A minute passes then Bolin gently begins to peel Mako's fingers from the hot knife handle. This always makes his nervous. Mako's fingers are long and delicate like a pianist's, while Bolin's are clumsy and thick as sausages. It's funny that he's the younger brother; sometimes Bolin feels like it would only take a moment's inattention to shatter his brother into irreparable pieces. He tries not to think about that. It's just too scary. People think he's naïve because he makes jokes. That isn't true.

"Let me see," Bolin murmurs. He presses Mako's shoulder back, forcing him to open his chest. No matter how horrified he is, Bolin never says anything. Mako's fire is not a flame, but a volcano. When he bursts it's a no-holds-barred disaster, woe to he that was unfortunate enough to be in his path. There will be ashes. There will be screaming. Tonight's damage isn't that bad, but it's the worst it's been in a long while.

"I didn't mean to," Mako says. He tries to sound angry, but Bolin hears through it to the real underneath. He can hear that what Mako really sounds like is a child who's been caught breaking the oh-so-cliché vase. So instead of snapping Bolin smiles gently with his sad eyes.

"I know you didn't." He pulls Mako's arms so they're palms up and he can see the full extent. There are four swallow cuts on the inside of his left elbow, and two deeper and clumsier ones on the right. Blood soaks through his thin white shirt at the hip. When Bolin lifts the fabric, he sees three deep gashes marring Mako's side. Furious burns circle them like vultures waiting for their prey.

"I'm sorry," Mako tells him gruffly. Bolin surprises them both by pulling him into a hug. He buries his nose in Mako's hair, remembering the days when that smell meant everything would be okay. That smell was the smell of Mako's bed, and Mako's coat, and the smell of chased-away nightmares and well-fed bellies. In his darkest moments, Bolin wonders if this is some sort of twisted form of payback. Whether issued by Mako or the Spirits, he doesn't know.

It's a horrible thing to think about your own brother. This still doesn't stop Bolin from thinking _oh Mako, what have you done_?

"We should get you cleaned up, bro." Bolin guides him through the maze of Air Temple rooms to the men's washroom. He helps Mako strip off his shirt and scrubs the blood out while Mako methodically cleans his wounds. He hisses when the soap hits the burns, but other than that he's perfectly silent. After a few minutes the wound is clean and the shirt washed, so they go back to the room without talking. Bolin hangs Mako's wet shirt on a hanger to dry and throws him a new shirt from the closet.

"I'll be fine," he protests, getting ready to toss it back. Bolin rolls his eyes. His brother is an idiot.

"We both know you'll be cold, and unfortunately you've already run through your daily allotment of self-abuse," Bolin replies. "Now put on the damn shirt."

Mako obeys grudgingly. He climbs into bed and Bolin goes in after him, curving against his back. Mako trembles under his touch, whole body convulsing with the electric-spark weight of all the things he doesn't say. Bolin wants to help him, but he doesn't know what else he can do and he's aware that the problem is getting worse. He knows Korra was trying to be generous, but putting him and Mako in separate rooms had to be the worst idea ever.

* * *

Asami wonders, sometimes.

She's wondering now as she's eating breakfast at Pema and Tenzin's table, pretending not to stare at Mako who has failed to notice her not-staring anyway. He's too busy having a silent yet vicious argument with his brother. Clearly something has happened in the last twelve hours since Asami last saw them, but what it is and what it means is as mysterious as Ikki's disturbing ability to memorize useless information. Asami rolls a blueberry over her plate with her chopstick.

"I'm going to go take a shower," Mako announces suddenly, getting to his feet. Bolin's eyes narrow and their gazes lock in a battle of wills. Mako's nostrils flare and for a moment Asami wonders if he's going to breathe fire.

"I'll go with you," Bolin says in a kind voice that isn't really kind at all. He smiles showing teeth white as mourning gowns. Mako's fists clench and Asami's throat tightens. She is floundering, unsure of the role of the ex-girlfriend in this scene. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe she just exits _stage right_. Asami doesn't move.

"Don't," Mako hisses at his brother, clenching his jaw. "I'm _fine_." He begins to walk away, heading down the hall to the shower rooms. Bolin curses under his breath. Asami can feel the tension radiating off him, the sick-drowning feeling of someone who doesn't know the right actions to take. He finally releases a heavy sigh, and that's when Asami throws her arms around him.

Mako and Bolin have similar faces, but if you had only their bodies to go by you wouldn't ever guess they that they're related. Bolin is very solid, stable and strong as the earth. When he hugs her back she notices how the weight of his arms on her body make him so very present. She rests her head on his broad shoulder, his thick ropes of muscle rippling beneath her cheek. Bolin feels warm like a hearth; Mako is always cold.

Asami once took off his gloves and grabbed his hand because she wanted to feel his skin. His fingers became so icy she couldn't hold on; it hurt too much. She knows still the ridges and valleys of his too-sharp bones, the way his body is all angles and taut skin. Mako's vertebrae and ribs thrust out painfully beneath his flesh. They make Asami think of when she was a little girl and she learned that roses had thorns. _To protect themselves_, her mother said. Asami can still remember the shock of watching blood stain her white hand.

Mako is like that; he wants everyone just out of reach. Look-but-don't-touch. Even though they dated long enough, Mako never let Asami under his clothes. At first she thought he was just being a gentleman, and then she thought it was because she wasn't Korra, but in the end she realized that it was just Mako. Something in him violently resisted the revelation of skin, and even though she never asked Asami craves knowledge of his secret.

"I should probably go after him," Bolin says. His weariness is apparent in the slow way he disentangles himself from her. Glancing up at him nervously, Asami wonders if she can finally ask the question she's not supposed to ask.

"What's." No, she will not stop. Deep breath. She's going to do this, damn it. "Bolin – what's going on with Mako?" The words poured out in a rush like water from a burst dam and it takes a moment for Bolin to even process her question. When he finally gets there he looks at her for what feels like a very long time, even though it's probably only a couple of minutes. Asami turns away and stabs her blueberry. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Bolin tells her. "Mako just has some issues he needs to work out." Then he sighs and stands up, towering over her like the founders statues in the city squares. His shoulders, she thinks again, are so wide. Maybe it was a mistake to ask Mako to bear so much. His shoulders are thin and bony; how much weight can they really support before the bones just crumble?

* * *

Mako sits in the shower carving lines into his thigh. The blood mixes with the water and he likes the way it looks swirling down the drain. He feels a twinge of guilt for lying to his brother, then he remembers that all he said was _I'm going to take a shower _and _I'm fine_. Both these things are truth; the realization perks him up considerably.

With that thought in mind, Mako decides that four cuts is enough and gets up to finish washing himself. It occurs to him that he isn't really sure why he had to cut himself four times, but Mako pushes – no, _shoves _– that aside. This isn't a problem. It's just self-discipline, distributing punishment he knows he deserves. If he can't remember why at the moment, well, surely he'll come up with something later.

Mako is not an addict. He does not _need_ to cut, it's just something he does when he does something wrong. If he didn't mess up so much, he wouldn't need to cut and burn himself. This is just the way that things work. It's not a big deal. Mako winces when the water hits his wounds. Last night's cuts rupture and the open wounds wail at the pain. Gritting his teeth, Mako continues his shower like _nothing is happening_. He is not going to let Bolin be even a little bit right.

Wrapping himself in a thick black robe, Mako pads down the quiet hallway back to his room. He likes having a space of his own, somewhere to be quiet with his head without Bolin's loud interruptions. He knows his brother is well-intentioned, but sometimes the world feels like too much and Mako can't stand it. He doesn't like noise.

On bad days, he feels like someone has stripped him of his skin, like he is all nerve and all rawness. It's like walking around with three degree burns all over your body. Or like drowning, trapped under the laughing sea with no way to get to the surface, no way to get a breath. Mako has nightmares sometimes about the water around the pro-bender arena. He dreams of drowning, of kali sticks and lightening and Korra's bloated body unmoving on the surface.

He has a difficult time getting dressed this morning. His clothes irritate his wounds, yanking at the skin like they were lined with sandpaper. After a while he gives up, throwing himself on the bed. Mako closes his eyes and tells himself (again) that this is the last night that this is going to happen. He's going to quit now, or at least getting better at hiding it. Mako hates frightening Bolin. It's a double-bind, because when Mako scares Bolin he is being _bad_, and when he is bad he must be _punished_, but it's the _punishment_ that upsets Bolin and makes Mako _bad _**in the first place**. In the past, Mako has dreamed of getting his brother settled and then killing himself so he won't hurt him anymore.

It's not because it was hard being responsible all the time. It's not because he's lived with the fear of starvation and disease and violence his entire life. It is most certainly not the secret that hangs between them in words they cannot bear. Mako offers no answers; Bolin doesn't ask.

_Mako-did-you-buy-the-food-I-ate-the-food-you-were-not-hungry-for-by-opening-your-body-to-men-who-were-hungry-but-for-something-other-than-food?_

If you never ask the question, you never have to feel guilty about the answer.

Mako doesn't allow himself to remember it most days. Sometimes he even forgets for whole weeks. But then the nightmares come and he is only aware of soft gentleman's hands in unsharable places. He remembers teeth and nails that ripped his skin up, blood in places there shouldn't be blood. There are lips that are too wet (_drowning in __**saliva**__)_, and then there are his own lips rounded in an _O_ and gagged with something tooawfultothinkabout.

Even now, Mako sometimes pukes just from seeing yogurt, or mayonnaise, or melting vanilla ice cream. Cheese and cream-based sauces aren't allowed either. He once had to eat a whole carton of yogurt because Bolin was with him. Afterwards he went to the bathroom, stuck two fingers down his throat, and puked until he saw blood. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the first time Mako saw blood and liked it.

* * *

"Asami? Can I, um, talk to you?"

Asami opens her door and forces a smile. Korra, Queen of Bad Liars, has her face arranged in an expression of forced casualness. Asami is unfortunately familiar with this expression of Korra's; it never fails to inspire feelings of great unease. She considers shutting the other girl out, but she looks so pathetic Asami relents.

"Come in," she says, stepping aside. Korra does so and looks around uncertainly. It is painfully obvious that she is putting too much thought into where to sit. Asami settles the question by pulling the chair out from her desk, which Korra accepts. She keeps down in a poor attempt to hide her pink blushing face and Asami cringes as she takes a seat on her bed. Oh Spirits. Maybe she ought to delegate this one to Pema –

"DidyouandMakodostuff?" Under other circumstances, Korra's ability to get all of that out in a single breath might be rather impressive. Asami however merely blinks and tries to fathom how she even begins to answer that question. After her father gave her The Talk, Asami figured she had successfully gotten through the most awkward conversation of her life. Because really, what could be worse that talking about _sex _with her _father_? Unfortunately, life now laughs in the face of her smugness and demands that she discuss the sex life of her and her ex-boyfriend with his new girlfriend. Asami is starting to think that there's some spirit who just really has it out for her.

"Can you be, um, more specific?" she finally squeaks. Korra looks at her like Asami has announced that there will be no more Winter Solstices ever again. Ugh. That was not the goal. "I mean, I don't know if you want advice on, ah, preferences, or something more general . . .?" She trails off, hoping Korra will take over from here.

Naturally, Korra doesn't immediately do so (because for all her Avatar training, it has always been abundantly clear that her education is, ah, wanting in some areas), but after a couple of minutes she seems to work up the courage (even if courage involves Definitely Not Looking Asami in the Eye).

"I want – to be with him," Korra says, her voice soft. She dares to glance up and Asami quickly nods to show that she gets it. Korra's whole body relaxes like someone unfroze her blood. She turns away again, and Asami silently ponders how very young she sounds.

"That's normal," she replies hesitantly. Are there Avatar-specific rules about these things? Or waterbender ones? She's heard the rumors about the full moon. Korra blushes again and plays with the hem of her shirt. "Did anyone explain the mechanics – "

"Yes!" Korra's voice goes up at least two octaves. Wincing, she clears her throat. "Okay, this is really awkward, but you're the only one who can help me," she pleads. "It's like Mako doesn't want me to touch him and I don't know what I'm doing wrong!" She raises her hand like she's going to hit something, then seems to think better of it and lowers her arm back down to her side. She screws her eyes shut like just to speak the words aloud causes her physical pain.

"Oh," Asami whispers. Korra buries her face in her hands and she makes an aggravated snarling noise.

"So you see – you see why you're the only person I can ask." Korra curls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around her knees.

"I wish I could help you but - our relationship never went there," Asami says. Korra's whole face crumbles, rock into dust. "Look, we weren't together that long, it's not unheard of," she adds, almost more to herself. Korra's distress is so apparent it's almost tangible.

"I hate not knowing what to do," she whispers. "I don't know how to move or what to say or what's … nice." She trips on the last word and Asami nods too quickly in a not-totally-successful attempt to save her some embarrassment. The two girls are quiet, both wrapped up in the enigma of a man lying just a few doors down. "I'm going to go talk to him," Korra says determinedly. She takes off, ponytails whirling sharp as whips.

Asami stares out the door and wonders if she'll regret not following later.

* * *

If she were being honest with herself, Korra might admit that she's scared. Since she's lying, however, she'll continue to repeat _everything is fine_. Sometimes she thinks that if she only repeats something enough times, it will start to become real.

She doesn't knock when she reaches his door because she's afraid of losing her nerve. Instead Korra throws the door open just in time to see Mako wincing as he pulls on a shirt. There is a hint of red across his cheeks suggesting he's embarrassed about something, but Korra doesn't know what it could be. Mako's face continues to be unbendable as platinum even to her; you only see what he allows, and he allows very little. So she stands in the doorway, uncertain, wishing there was a rulebook for these kinds of things so she would have some kind of bearing to find.

Shutting the door, she grabs his hand and ignores his look of surprise. Korra pulls him towards the bed, falling down on her back as she pulls him on top of her for a kiss. He hisses and jerks against her. When Mako pulls away his caramel eyes are very wide and his mouth is hanging open like he knows he wants to say something but isn't sure what.

Korra smiles, and ignoring her unease tries to pull him back down. He is perfectly still for a minute, then he is throwing her hand back at her and scrambling out of the bed. She's never seen him more so fast. Standing at the end of the bed, he eyes her like she's a wild rat-dog roaming the allies of Republic City. Her heart is pounding so loudly it almost hurts.

"What are you doing?" Mako asks. He doesn't sound right. He sounds tired, and annoyed, and although she can't quite believe it Korra thinks she might even sense fear. Mako stares at his feet, refusing to meet her gaze.

"I want to be with you," she whispers, getting up. "Please." She steps towards him and he steps back.

"You need to go now," Mako demands. When she doesn't he heads into the hallway and Korra chases after him. His hands are shaking and she wants to know _why_. This isn't right, this isn't the way things are supposed to be. She catches him by the shoulder and yanks back roughly. She wants answers (or at least she's pretty sure she does).

"What – what am I doing wrong?" She means to say _what's wrong with you_, but the words change on her at the last minute and now they're hanging in the air and she can't take them back. Mako's control slips, and for a moment she sees the devastating horror and grief exploding inside. Korra blinks and it's gone. It infuriates her, and she wishes he would yell and scream and fight with her because this silence is awful and _it's scaring her_.

"Oh, Korra," he murmurs. He moves to touch the side of her face and now she's the one to step back. Korra shakes her head, swallowing hard.

"I know – I know that I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm really trying, okay? I just – just – and look, I know I'm not as pretty – as pretty as Asami – " she stops short, needing to recover from the hit before she can continue. "Could you please just help me out here?" she begs, unshed tears shining behind her eyes.

"I can't do this." He says this more to himself than her, and before she can ask Mako what he means he's run away from her. Mako ducks into the men's bathroom and the sound of Korra beating her fists against the door echoes loudly, reverberating through both the bathroom and the hall. She is screaming, screaming his name but there is no response, no anything at all. Collapsing against the wall, she begins to cry and her keening wails chill everyone who hears her.

Standing under the shower again, Mako steels himself with a deep breath. Then presses his hand to the bone of his left hip, hating himself for all the terrible/dirty/sinful/**monstrous **things he's done. He reached past the hot blood the white bone the sinewy veins protecting Korra's so-vulnerable heart, and he has bitten the flesh to **kill her dead**. So steadies his hand on his hip, and as his skin begins to erupt the world goes white to the tune of Mako's screaming.

* * *

chapter one – _fin. _


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

* * *

_Excerpt from the "Brave Soldier Boy Comes Marching Home:  
__A Study of Mental Disturbance in Returning Soldiers".  
__Study funding: grant from a private donor._

_**Classified note, unclassified in the second year of Firelord Zuko's reign:**__ this study was funded by a private grant from his highness General Iroh I, son of Azulon and Illah._

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In discussing patient cases, the seven doctors monitoring the fifty-six (56) returned soldiers began to observe a repeating pattern of symptomatology. We have come to call this affliction **post-traumatic stress disorder**. The doctors on this case believe this disorder to be caused by one or several events during which the individual endures such an amount of stress as to cause a mental break.

This mental break can be further understood in the following way, utilizing the timeline concept. If life is a single horizontal line, the traumatic event is a break in the line's trajectory. The trauma is that the individual's world now exists in two parts: "before" and "after". In the "before", a series of beliefs and rules allowed one to maintain order in the chaos of life. The trauma undoes this by exposing his rules as artifice. In the world of "after", then, one wanders around lost, unable to navigate this world.

So this then is the definition of trauma: an event that so shatters your world as to destroy it.

* * *

It's not the kind of thing you forget, it's the kind of thing that stays in your nightmares for the rest of your life and doesn't go away no matter how much you will it to. You can't undo it, you can't make yourself forget, and part of you believes that even if you could that you shouldn't. There would be something evil in forgetting the pain, something beyond even words.

Perhaps it's in the hiss of _complicit_, and the lingering ghost of _implication_. You wonder if you've become the monster-under-the-bed. If you are now co-conspirator, guilty as if you had drawn the wounds yourself.

No, Korra will never forget the sound of Mako's screaming. The **after **is a blur – but she won't forget the initial moment. When she first hears it, she thinks that she must be hallucinating because no creature could make such an awful sound, right? And even if it could – oh Spirits, she doesn't _want_ to think about what kind of pain it must be in. But then the screaming is getting LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER and she can't ignore/refute/pretend. The fear of but-what-if-it's-real (in her gut she already know the yes-it's-real answers) spurs her to her feet.

Somewhere between sitting and standing she realizes that Mako is the one screaming like that and her stomach writhes like it was set on fire.

Swearing under her breath Korra charges into the bathroom. The floor tiles yield to her earthbending and crack under her feet, shuddering from the force of her panic/anger/horror. Korra skids to a stop to yank the shower curtain down (why? It takes far too long) then throws herself under the water. Mako's screams are fading into whimpers now, unhappy little noises that scathe her skin all the same. His hand has slipped away from his hipbone and she can see the mangled flesh (ugly ugly ugly ugly black and soot and black and why oh why oh why).

"Shh," she murmurs, the comforting gibberish spilling out her lips without her even thinking about it. Korra's brain is a millionmillion miles away, hiding in a cool dark place where bad things don't happen. She wants to wake up, she wants to find out that this is a badbad dream but she knows, she _knows, _that that isn't going to happen. She keeps bleating _it's okay it's okay it's okay _anyway because she still half believes the words can make it so. Korra needs to believe that nothing (truly) bad will happen to Mako otherwise – no. There is no otherwise. She will not allow it.

Hands shaking, she bends tendrils of water to cast pure, clean lines over the planes of his body. Pressing his hand away from the wound, Korra drives the water into his flesh and begins to knit the blood vessels and muscles back together. She does her best not to think about that fact that this is _Mako_, that that is his viscera and his bones that she can feel. Korra doesn't notice she's crying until she finds that she's bending her own tears into Mako's burn. She wonders what that means. Mako remain stoically silent, not even watching her.

"Please just be okay," she says as a tremor seizes her body. Pink skin now covers the old flesh, but Korra can't forget the image. She throws herself over Mako, burying her face in his chest and sobbing. Now that the danger has passed, all the emotions are beating down on her like a hailstorm. She almost – she can't –

_Shh, shh, shh _is Mako's hiss in her ear, his hands making soothing circles on her back. They cup her shoulder blades, draws the tension from them in easy strokes. He goes to pet her hair but Korra jerks away before he can, irony and pain and so many other things that she can't put words to crashing through her like lava through the volcano.

"What is going on?" she demands. Water swirls around them, storm fast and storm deadly. The droplets have not yet hardened to ice, but they are as sharp and strong and chaotic as Korra's too-exposed heart. She is almost surprised that her blood is not splattering all over the floor to leave rose-petal stains.

"Nothing is going on," Mako says. He is perfect composure, the quintessence of self-control; so self-assured, in fact, that for a moment Korra almost allows herself the fantasy-dream of believing him.

Except if nothing is going on why is she sitting fully-dressed on the shower floor?

"_Liar_," Korra damns him. Their eyes meet, remembering the last time she made that accusation and all the things that followed in its wake. Mako sets his jaw and Korra's chest bursts into raw veins and tendons so she can't even breathe.

Bereft of words (not that she was ever very good with them to start) she grabs his arms and presents her evidence. Mako's eyes follow her (trembling) fingers as she traces the strings of scars haunting his body. They are foreign language words that make up the Book of Mako; Korra will not stop until she masters his alphabet and can read his tale. Mako's skin tells all the verities his flame-bright eyes withhold.

Which is probably why he withdraws, slithering from her grip like ice melting in the hand. It is impossible to hold onto, for the harder you try the more easily it flows away.

* * *

Mako remembers the first time he did it. He was twelve years old at the time and he had few options. Up until then, he and Bolin had both been young enough that others saw their begging as "pitiful" or "tragic". By twelve, however, puberty was starting to creep in leaving no room for sympathy.

_Rotten teeangers, get a job! _the men now shouted. Women hurried past with their eyes trained ahead, clutching children's hands with platinum-strong grip. Money and food were scarce; shelter even more so. Desperation began to needle Mako's bones; he didn't know how desperate until he met Cecy.

The first thing he noticed was that Cecy was blond. Her hair was so light in practically glowed in the dark, making the moon and the stars envious. She had eyes the color of coffee, and skin that was fair but rough. Cecy's cheeks were a ruddy, leathery red whose color burned through the thickest makeup. She was pretty; not stunning, not gorgeous, not unnaturally ethereal.

Cecy was eleven with a crush on Bolin. At first, Mako didn't approve, but when her crush turned to generous fist-fulls of yuans he relented. Cecy shared a flat with two older girls, fifteen year-old Samya and fourteen year-old Kasha. Winter was coming; a few coaxing words from Cecy coupled with Mako's quiet solemnity and Bolin's unflinching innocence persuaded the girls to take on the extra roommates.

_Don't mess things up, don't mess things up_. This was Mako's mantra through the whole season. He took on odd jobs running errands, watching other people's children. He was smart and good with figures; Mako made his best money helping Republic City's poor fill out tax forms and negotiate business transactions. Cotran the Baker gave him day-old bread and pastries in exchange for writing his budget each month.

"You're my only employee I don't worry will cheat me," he would half-joke as they sat in his cramped kitchen. The white room was forever coated in a light layer of flour and smelling of dark sweet molasses. The ovens kept it so warm that even in winter Cotran walked around in only an undershirt and light slacks. He was kind, but he brought too many women home and Mako knew better than to ever ask him for the favor of a roof.

Mako was handling it. He was bringing in enough money to contribute towards food and rent, enough money that he could even save a bit. Then Bolin coughed one morning in February and the world ended.

* * *

Cecy, Samya and Kasha always had more money and free time than seemed possible. Mako knew that during the day Samya worked as a maid and Kasha as a waitress, but then at night they put on thick layers of red lipstick and went out with sad kohl-lined eyes. He always knew when they were back because Cecy would sit by the fireplace and cry while Kasha threw up and Samya made tea. Earthbender-Bolin was a heavy sleeper and never woke for these rendezvous. Mako never mentioned them because he didn't want to know.

But Bolin coughed and Mako didn't have the money to bring him to a doctor or get medicine. He remembers now how he held Bolin's sweaty, hot hand in his own and muttered silly things about being okay and just needing to rest a little. Cecy refused to look at him, Kasha stared without emotion and the vines Samya's sorrow grew and grew until Mako was choked under their slithery ministrations.

"He's going to die, isn't he?" he gasped when Bolin finally fell into a fitful sleep. He kept his back to the girls, staring outside at the setting sun. There was silence, and then there was Kasha's quivering voice.

"There is – there is one way to make money quickly, a lot of it," she whispered. Kasha had been sitting at their small kitchen table playing cards with Samya and Cecy; now she got up to take Mako by the arm and bring him over. In the years that followed he never forgot that she held his hand the entire time.

Slowly, gently, like walking out onto a just-frozen lake, the girls began to unravel their story. Cecy made the most of the three because she was young and blond. She recounted distantly how she started before she knew what she was doing. A man approached her on the street and said _one hundred yuans if you take off your clothes for me_. She was cold and hungry; one-hundred yuans was nothing to turn her nose up at.

Nothing was something to turn her nose up at, for at the end of the night Cecy had blood all over her thighs and a thousand yuans in her pocket.

"If you come with me, I can introduce you to Bia, she's the one who finds our clients," Samya explained, speaking past Mako's trembling hands and unblinking eyes. "She won't steal your money. She's fair."

Mako knows that he nodded, but it has always felt like it wasn't him that did it, that maybe a spirit just pushed his head to his chest. He has never been able to decide whether the spirit was benevolent or wrathful.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES: **Okay, I would have liked that to have been longer but something is better than nothing ...? Anyway, please review and let me know what you think.


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